As a grad student in history, one of the required classes we must take is a research seminar, where you and a few other grad students help a professor with research and learn how to do it yourselves. The topic varies from professor to professor, but this one is with the classical/early church historian. We're studying the excavation of the monastery of St. Euthymius in Palestine, and the interesting personalities connected to said excavation. Part of the course also includes understanding early church history, particularly in the East.

As such, our reading list includes Bp. Ware's The Orthodox Church, a couple of books on early church monasticism, and Derwas Chitty's The Desert a City.

Nice set, huh?

Our professor is also in contact with Bp. Ware, since the latter knew Derwas Chitty, one of the main people we're looking at in the course.

My professor, for the record, isn't Orthodox himself, but his wife is.

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." --Bertrand Russell

My professor, for the record, isn't Orthodox himself, but his wife is.

What is his religion? I'm curious because of his knowledge of early Christianity.

I don't think he's all that religious himself, but he was raised Anglican. He is also the school's classical/ancient historian, so it comes with the territory. I could be misjudging it entirely of course, but he has said he is not a member of the Orthodox church himself.

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"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." --Bertrand Russell

"For, by its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some knowledge of it by knowing what it is not." - St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, I, 14.

Oh, there's been a lot more Orientalists and Middle East specialists associated with Leiden.

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Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything so that he may do it no more.A hasty quarrel kindles fire,and urgent strife sheds blood.If you blow on a spark, it will glow;if you spit on it, it will be put out; and both come out of your mouth